I may not hope from outward forms to win, The passion and the life, whose fountains are within. Coleridge
For some people, Ash Wednesday is a day of fasting. These days we are quite familiar with the latest diets and slimming fads – and consequently put a lot of pressure on body conscious people – and they harmonize quite well with a culture preoccupied with image. The idea of fasting, and the related notion of restraint or renunciation, however, seems somewhat alien. Because of this we lose a link to a deeper process than dieting, rooted in the unconscious. Fasting, like the silence and stillness of meditation, allow us let go of some of the normal practices of each day and we can see then what then arises in the mind. Ceasing some activities or changing routines which have become second nature can be a useful way of reminding us to turn towards our inner life rather than distracting ourselves from it. We are challenged to declutter our busy life and see where our real priorities lie, to travel lighter. So, “letting go”, in this sense, means not buying into automatic habits and patterns of mind, which limit us into kinds of contraction, and seeing what can be done differently. We become more fluid and can experiment with the space which this gives to act with greater creativity.
Sacrifice is an important concept for anyone interested in leading a religious life, but most people today seems to think that sacrifice means giving something up. This is how shallow our religious sense has become. Sacrifice really involves the art of drawing energy from one level and reinvesting it at another level to produce a higher form of consciousness.
Robert Johnson, Jungian Analyst
Attention means focus, it means simplicity, it means giving your attention to one thing, one person at one time. Not in a fixated compulsive addictive way, but to be able to really give yourself, at that moment, to the person you are with. Learning to meditate is learning to pay attention. It is the art of attention in the simplest purest most immediate way. When you sit to meditate you let go of all the 1001 different things that are going on in the head. But don’t underestimate how distracted you are. It’s not easy, so don’t expect it to be easy. But it is simple. And because it is simple, anyone can do it who really wishes to do it, and is humble enough to keep coming back to it and learn, day by day, little by little, how to pay attention.
Mindfulbalance 